Continuing professional development (CPD) is required for all medical professionals in the UK to maintain their accreditation and continually update their skills. For dentists, mandatory CPD includes training in areas like radiation safety, CPR, and complaint handling. Dentists can also choose from additional CPD courses focusing on business management, clinical areas like implants and orthodontics. Each dentist must create a personal development plan to address their individual learning needs and meet the requirements set by the regulatory body.

1. Dentist CPD: the lowdown
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2. Every registered medical professional in the UK has to undertake so many hours of continuing
professional development (CPD) a year. To stay accredited, they must continually update their skills
throughout their career. This is as true for physiotherapists and GPs as it is for psychotherapists and
dentists.
This is because the medical professions recognise that the learning doesn’t stop once someone is
qualified. To be a truly great doctor, dentist or physio, they need to carry on learning for life. They need
to keep their skills up to date to be able to serve their patients. And of course, new technology and
techniques are appearing at a startling rate. Imagine a doctor who qualified in the late-80s who hadn’t
learnt anything new since then? They would be so out of the loop in terms of today’s equipment and
approaches to care.
As far as dentist CPD goes, there are certain mandatory requirements each dentist must undertake, and
then they can choose to do further training in particular subjects.

3. Mandatory dentist CPD includes:
• Ionising Radiation Medical Exposure Regulations training
• Hands-on Basic Life Support training
• Complaints Handling
• Manual Handling Objects Level 1
• Fire Safety Awareness.
That is just a small selection of the must-do dentist CPD for clinicians in the UK.
Other dentist CPD includes courses that focus on the business and financial side of dental practice, such
as:
• dental accounting
• effective leadership and management
• income protection
• improving private income.

4. And there are dentist CPD courses that focus on particular fields of dentistry, such as:
• oral surgery
• implants
• paediatric dentistry
• braces
• dentures
• gum disease.
These courses can be accessed at cities across the UK, including in London and Birmingham.

5. Each dentist has to create a Personal Development Plan to show how they will meet the dentist
CPDrequirements as set out by the General Dental Council. This is unique to each dentist and should
identify and address that particular clinician’s learning needs, as well as cover the mandatory trainings.
The dentist must also reflect and analyse on their CPD, identifying what they learnt, what went well,
what didn’t work and how they can address this in the future. This creates a learning cycle that will
sustain them throughout their career.

6. Links:
 Dental CPD in London and Birmingham: https://www.wisbora.com
 CPD requirements for dentists: https://www.gdc-uk.org/professionals/cpd/requirements
 Personal Development Plan: https://www.gdc-uk.org/professionals/cpd/enhanced-cpd